spiders

I picked up the old crusty shoe from my carport. It had been sitting there ever since I moved in back in 2010. Slowly rotting away, but always there. It was some sort of symbol, I rationalized as I left it there.

Eventually, it became coated in spider webs. So many that every time I watered my flowers, I hosed down that shoe to try and make the webs go away. The shoe would fill up with water, bloat and slowly leak the water out from the lace holes and from a giant hole in the sole of the shoe – the reason I stopped wearing them years before.

But the flood of the shoe never got the spiders to go away. Sometimes they’d scamper out and walk around on the cement near the shoe, trying their best to stay out of the water. Other times they’d just stay on the shoe, walking around on the top of it. There were big spiders and little spiders. I’m assuming they were all related in whatever way spider families are. Maybe they argued. Maybe they shared a fly for dinner. Maybe they wanted to kill each other. Whatever it was, it happens.

Today, I did the same routine. I had just finished digging up a bunch of weeds and gigantic pieces of grass that were engulfing the three daisy plants that my girlfriend planted for me on my birthday in April. They’ve already bloomed twice, and it’s always a nice feeling to see the big white petals and yellow centers of those flowers. But, because of where they were planted, I haven’t been able to mow that part of the lawn, and it was becoming a jungle. And soon, the jungle would overtake the still small daisy plants. About two hours I spent pulling up weeds, grass and any other green plant that was invading the patch reserved for the daisies. I saw many bugs, mostly earwigs and baby crickets. Baby crickets, by the way, are extremely cool to watch. And there were a lot of them to watch.

A few spiders – black ones with huge claws – scurried about too. None of them like the ones that have taken up residence in my old size 12.5 Samba Classics. I would sho them away with the mini shovel, wait aren’t they called garden shovels? No need to kill them, they provide a service, killing the ants and other bugs that attempt to come into my house. Only when they come in the house do I kill spiders. I really just have a huge hang up about spiders crawling in my mouth or on my body while I sleep. Ask any girlfriend and she’ll have at least one experience of me waking up in a fright, sometimes throwing pillows at things or jumping out of bed flicking what I believe to be bugs off of my body. I guess it could be an early sign of some kind of mental issue, or, I just don’t like fucking spiders.

That, of course, would go back to my childhood. I used to not be scared of them. I’d let daddy longlegs walk on my arms and watch them. I’d stare at big spiders that would build webs across our front stoop late at night because my dad never turned the freaking porch light off. Still doesn’t. Of course, he leaves the television on 24 hours a day now too. Me, I rarely turn my own any more. It’s only good for VHS tapes and DVS anyway. Old hand-me-down televisons just aren’t useful anymore since the forced switch of the “public” airwaves to digital.

Anyway, one day I was climbing the giant Magnolia tree on the side of our house. I used to climb it all the time. The branches were nicely spaced out – and plentiful – all the way to the top. And as a kid, it was a perfect diversion/hiding place.

On this particular day, either in the summer or on the weekend – I was home and not at school, so I’m guessing this is correct – we were having our house painted. I remember the guy, he was wearing blue striped overalls and a blue painter’s cap. He had a mustache, I believe, and a red handkerchief.

I was in the tree, probably thinking about being in some imaginary war or some kind of secret spying mission against the Russians, when a spider waked across my hand. It was huge and scared the crap out of me. I took my other hand and flicked it – fast and hard – to get rid of the monstrosity. Only problem, of course, was the fact that I now was no longer holding on to a branch. The fall was sudden, and full of clunks against branches all the way down. Luckily, I was in a Magnolia tree and it had all those branches. I was well over two stories in the air, nearly at the very top of our house’s chimney when I fell.

I don’t remember much after letting go and falling.

I was told the painter heard me scream and turned in time to see me hit the ground. He rushed over and checked on me. Other than a few bruises, I was actually fine. But scared out of my mind. He tried to calm me down, and by now  my mom had come rushing outside.

She grabbed me, and probably thought horrible thoughts about the painter for a moment.

“What is it Randy?” she asked repeatedly.

I was crying by now. It’s a natural reaction of a kid. Something bad happens, and mom shows up. Time for the waterworks. Eventually, I said I fell from the tree. And something about a spider.

My mom thanked the painter and he went back to work. I went inside and don’t remember anything else about that day.

I do know that I never liked spiders again. And still don’t. I used to kill them all. No questions asked. Then slowly, I developed a little bit of a truce with them.

Until one day a girlfriend – who no longer thinks of me, or that day probably – was bitten by a brown recluse. She got the ugly wound, the rot, the puss. And I was angered by spiders again. Killing them wantonly.

Eventually, the wound healed. But she would dump me.

In my stuff that I moved back, months later, I noticed webs. I poked open the box of pretty valuable video game stuff and saw webs, everywhere. And a bunch of dead insects. This box hadn’t been touched by me other than to  move it from North Carolina to Florida, and then move it back to North Carolina from Florida in the last four years. It had been sitting in a corner, in my bedroom of all places, ever since I got back from Gainesville that last time.

I freaked and threw the box against a wall.  The spider came out. He was huge. He was a brown recluse. He’d been living in my room for almost a year now, feeding on whatever bugs came in. Luckily, it seemed from the carcasses in his/her web, they were plentiful. Crickets and grasshoppers and roaches and the worst – camel crickets, the bastards that jump everywhere – were everywhere. Dead and sucked dry.

I watched the spider walk around my stuff. I grabbed a glass from the kitchen and put it on top of the spider. And I looked at him. I wondered if he was related to the one who bit my ex. I hoped so. After he finally settled down, I picked up the glass, sliding a newspaper under it to keep him inside and walked outside.

I walked a few blocks down to the river and put the glass on the ground, letting him scurry out.

“Good travels, my friend!” I said to the spider as he walked towards downtown. It was my gesture of thanks, for killing all those bugs, and maybe inflicting some pain on someone who inflicted more on me than I think I’ll ever feel again.

I thought about that brown recluse today, when I grabbed the old shoe after flooding it again. A mother spider was holding her egg sack and carrying it around. I carefully took the shoe and put it in a new location – away from me and my bare feet, which is commonplace on the cement of the carport – and happily sent her and her family on their way to a new home.

I’m glad spiders and I get along better now. But I still wake up sometimes in the morning, look around and see a pillow tossed to the other side of the room. And I know it means that maybe, one of them was playing tricks on me last night.